Monday, February 15, 2016

Teaching with literary terms

These devices are related to the
special use of words and the change in their meaning.

-Rhetorical
questions: These are questions that don’t require an answer because they
actually are strong affirmative or negative statements. “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” Percy Bysshe Shelley.

-Apostrophe: An
exclamatory statement addressed to a person, or a personified animal or object.
"O death, where is thy sting? O
grave, where is thy victory?" Saint Paul of Tarsus

-Antithesis: The
opposition or contract between two ideas or words, arranged in a symmetrical
pattern: “It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times, it was the
age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…” (Charles Dickens)

-Paradox: The
connection of two contrasting ideas: “Child
is father of the man.” (William Wordsworth)

-Personification: The
attribution of human actions or features to non-human beings or objects. “There
was never a sound beside the wood but one / And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.” William Blake

-Hyperbole: Deliberate
exaggeration of certain characteristics in a description. “I was quaking from head to foot, and could have hung my hat on my eyes,
they stuck out so far." (Mark Twain)

-Comparison or
simile: The linking of meanings between two different objects, using a
conjunction (like, as, looking like etc.) “Elderly
American ladies leaning on their canes listed toward me like towers of Pisa.”
Vladimir Nabokov

-Metaphor: The
connection between a real concept and an abstract one with which it is compared
indirectly. “All the world’s a stage and
men and women merely players…” William Shakespeare